Vampire's Shade Discounted Box Set

by Vivienne Neas

  “Never,” I agreed.

  “Promise to leave the stake behind?”

  I nodded. He didn’t say anything about knives and guns.

  Connor started fading, see-through, when he spoke one more sentence.

  “For what it’s worth, I didn’t do it. Some people I hired did. When I found out I had to save myself. You can fill in the blanks for yourself.” He dematerialized and I was left alone again, cursing myself for being an idiot. For feeling the emptiness he’d left behind.

  It was okay, I reassured myself. I needed to know who was after him and why. That was why I’d agreed. Of course. When I drove toward the office I kept repeating it to myself, like a mantra. Maybe if I did it often enough, I would start believing it.

  Chapter 10

  “Nice to you see you’re back,” I said to Sonya who sat behind her desk again. “Two more nights until weekend.” Her eyes were a little swollen and her nose was red. She looked at me with a dull stare. Even sick Sonya wasn’t much of a party. If anything it annoyed her more when I didn’t act like I wanted to kill her.

  “No papers tonight?” I asked when she didn’t hand me a stack of papers like she usually did.

  “No, tonight you get to be humane,” she said in an icy voice. It was nice to know she had some emotions, albeit negative ones. I’d long ago gotten over being upset when people didn’t think I was lovable. You had to be able to do cute and cuddly for that. I didn’t do cute and cuddly.

  I walked through to Ruben’s office and opened the closed door without knocking.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “I’m here,” I countered. “And you don’t have work for me anyway, it seems. I don’t know what you’re upset about.”

  Ruben leaned back in his chair and stretched up his arms. His shirt had ketchup stains down the front.

  “You’re not prioritizing my clients like I asked,” he said. I rolled my eyes and sat down on the chair opposite him.

  “Don’t get comfortable, you’re hitting the streets in less than a minute.”

  “What am I supposed to do if I can’t find him?” I asked.

  “You’re going to make sure you do. I’m not giving you any other cases tonight so you get to take all the time you need to locate your mark. Don’t say I don’t ever do anything for you.”

  “I can’t go to my contact,” I said. Ruben looked up at me. This was my cue to explain.

  “He’s having… technical trouble.” It was close enough to the truth. Having your monitors kicked in was pretty technical.

  “Well, you’re resourceful. I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

  I got up and turned for the door without saying anything.

  “I want this guy before the weekend, Adele,” Ruben said and there was a warning in his voice.

  “I can’t do more than I can do, Ruben. You know better than to make me promise.”

  “I’m not making you promise. I’m promising. This one has consequences.”

  I walked out because it sounded too much like a threat. I didn’t respond well to threats – I tended to turn on them and be the one that was threatening. And when I threatened, I didn’t let it hang. I finished the job.

  When I stood outside I looked up and down the road. It was empty, the halogen lamps casting circles of light into the otherwise dark street. Very few people were around. It was common sense not to be out on the street in Westham’s downtown at night. I tried to decide where I was going to go.

  I couldn’t go to Joel, for obvious reason. Aspen was out of the question because I was supposed to be on duty and she didn’t have a nocturnal cycle like me. And the sad fact was that that was the total sum of people I knew. Besides my dad, who I’d already seen and hoped not to see again if I could help it, and Connor who I was seeing way too much of for a mark.

  I sighed.

  My life was complicated as hell, even when nothing was happening in it.

  The only thing left was to try and trace the person that had attacked me. She’d had a reason. Maybe it was something we could talk out. And by talking out I meant with the business end of my gun staring her in the face. But how was I going to do that? All I knew about her was that she couldn’t be human, and she had it in for me. It wasn’t a hell of a lead to go by.

  I got on my bike and drove up to Westham Hill. I’d seen her there last. I doubted she’d been following me, or else I would have seen her in other places. Unless she’d meant to stay away, which was just as possible. My idea was that I’d run into her by accident. She knew who I was and what I did, but she hadn’t meant to go after me. If that was the case she’d had to be monitoring the house in Caldwell Street, the same way I had. Or something.

  So if that was what it had been, that was where I was going to start. What did I have to lose? Only my life. No biggy.

  I scolded myself. I might have been running after a dead end.

  A person suddenly popped up in the beam of light my bike cast on the road, and I pulled both brakes and stepped down hard with my foot. My bike squealed and turned to the side, skidding forward. I gasped, hearing my own panic fill my helmet.

  I slid on the tarmac, the rough road tearing and ripping into my leather pants. The sickening sound of the road ripping up my paint filled the night.

  When I finally came to a stop I jumped up and looked around me. Where had the person gone? I inspected myself. My leather pants were torn all the way down the outside of my left leg. Dammit. Leathers weren’t cheap. At least it was better than being ripped raw myself. I was grazed a little, I could feel the fresh wound running down my leg, but it wouldn’t be deep. Only skin, no flesh. This was partly why I wore leathers – they were thick enough to protect me from a scrape. I picked up my bike and tried to start it. With luck it hadn’t flooded, but the paint job was horribly scratched. It hurt me more than my leg would tomorrow. My bike was one of the few things I got sentimental about. I usually distanced myself emotionally to spare myself. But a bike I could trust.

  I was becoming delusional. There was no one around me.

  All of this is going to catch up with you a voice swirled around me like a warm breeze. It was everywhere around me, and in my head, all at once. I was pretty sure it was hers. I’m watching you. You can run, princess, but you can’t hide.

  It was sickening and I had my knife out, even though there was nothing I could stab. A cackling laughter enveloped me and it made me feel useless and naïve.

  I was furious. Humiliated that I’d fallen, angry that my paintjob was messed up, horrified that I could be haunted by someone that was still alive.

  “Come out and face me, coward!” I shouted into the night. My voice broke around the edges of my sentence like cracked glass. She had to be here somewhere to mess with my mind like that. Supernatural creatures had all sorts of powers, but they also had ranges. She couldn’t find me if I was too far away, unless she had my blood. And I knew for a fact she didn’t. I had enough vampire in me to know my blood and what it felt like when someone else had some of it.

  The laughing sound danced around me again, mocking me, and then it faded like a lost echo. The final throes of her laughter melted away.

  Suddenly she was in front of me. Her hair was ice-white in the moonlight and this time her face wasn’t hidden in the shadows. She had a sharp, cat-like face and her eyes glowed green in the dark. Not pools of black like before. I would bet everything I had that she had some sort of feline characteristics and powers. She stood a couple of feet away from me. She wore a leather outfit that was a lot sexier than mine, I had to admit. I wondered if I should do something about my own clothes, but then I told myself I was a killer not a temptress.

  A smile lit up her eyes even more, and I realized she was still toying with my mind. Jealousy, self-doubt, materialistic values. I’d heard of something like her before but I couldn’t quite grasp it. There were creatures out there that could mess with your mind, bring up all sorts of thoughts and emotions, enough to destroy you without th
em even doing anything at all.

  “You take a while to catch on,” she said in a syrupy voice that I didn’t trust at all.

  “I don’t have all night.” Actually, I did. But I wasn’t going to let her last that long.

  She was quicker than I thought. With a blast of cold air she was right in front of me, our faces so close they almost touched. A sharp pain shot into my cheek. Her nails were colored red by my blood. The bitch had scratched me and she’d done it so fast I hadn’t seen it coming.

  I touched my cheek gingerly and my fingers came away slick with blood. I swore. I was starting to wonder if I wasn’t outmatched.

  “You swear like a man,” she said.

  “You fight like a girl.” So it wasn’t my most creative come back, but I had to say something before I launched at her because she was putting me on my ass so fast I couldn’t keep up. I had to win this one. I wasn’t the type that was accustomed to losing.

  She let out a feline scream when I jumped on her and we tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs. I tried to grab a handful of hair but it was platted down in a complicated twirl that didn’t give me much of a grip.

  “You need to up your beauty skills,” she said and she drew my mind to my own hair. It was in a ponytail, the black hair streaming down my back. As she redirected my mind she grabbed a handful and yanked. Her hand came away with strands of hair streaming in between her fingers.

  I balled my fist and hit her square in the mouth. Who said I was scared to hit a girl? It bloomed red the moment my hand left her face and she spat on the ground in a very feminine way. I was being slapped around like a child, and I had to make my mark quick if I wanted this fight to carry on equally.

  “You’re going to regret doing that,” she said, her voice still charming as ever. I reached for my knife. The silver had done the trick last time. I held it up, poised the blade to sink it into her chest. But her green eyes suddenly caught mine, and her pupils expanded until there was nothing left of her irises. Only black holes that fell into a void of nothing. It was welcoming, beckoning me into a world of oblivion. Of bliss. I could leave all this behind and escape to a place where my life didn’t exist. Where I didn’t exist.

  No, I had to fight it. My thoughts were almost like a fading echo in my own mind, but I focused on them. I couldn’t let her steal me away from myself. I blinked my eyes and tried to look away, but something held my gaze. Something powerful. Something invisible.

  “It’s a pity I’m not allowed to kill you,” she whispered, her voice rolling around my mind in waves. “It would have been so much fun to watch you bleed out. But my masters have a bone to pick with you. So I only get to play.”

  She ran a finger down my other cheek and it left a trail of fire behind. I wanted to fight back, but my body was numb and I couldn’t move my limbs. All I could feel was the emptiness, beckoning to me. All I could see were those bottomless pits and the whites of her eyes glowing fluorescent green.

  Chapter 11

  I blinked my eyes. They were foggy and I kept blinking to clear my vision. Slowly the room around me came into focus, and I found myself staring at my own ceiling.

  I sat up. Soft morning light filtered into the bedroom. I grabbed my phone where it lay face down on the nightstand, and checked it. It was eight-thirty, Friday morning. I hadn’t lost too much time. A million questions crashed down on me.

  How had I gotten home? What had happened after the fight last night? I groaned, the weight of humiliation dragging me down like a weight around my ankles; if a fight was even what I could call it. Where had the rest of the night gone? What had I done in the black void that stretched from then until now?

  I couldn’t remember anything. The last thing I remembered were those eyes, black pools of emptiness that drew me. The warmth came back, the numb feeling that I had been craving for years. The feeling I had never been able to find with any of my kills.

  I sat up and shook my head. I had to snap out of it. She was going to steal everything from me. Everything that made me, me. I knew it, like a solid truth inside me, cementing my resolve in place.

  When I threw back the cover and swung my legs out, I noticed I was still wearing my leathers. The graze on my leg smarted and I touched my thigh gingerly. Hadn’t I gotten undressed? I felt like I’d been stuck in a dream. I got up, unbuckled my thigh sheath and climbed out of the torn pants. The leather clung to my wounds, and peeling them off was like removing a Band-Aid. I threw them toward the bin. I stripped of the rest of my clothes as well.

  I slathered antiseptic cream on the wound that burned an angry red all the way down the length of my leg. It hurt like hell and I could feel my pulse throbbing down the length of my leg. The last thing I wanted was an infection the size of half my body. At least being half-vampire meant I would heal up in half the time. When I’d finished I took an inventory of my stuff.

  All my guns were in the gun safe. Normal. But my thigh sheath had still been on my leg. Strange. I walked over to the bed. My Glock was missing. When I searched through the room I found it on the dressing table. Wrong.

  In the bathroom I checked myself out in the mirror. I ran my hands down my face, and opened the tap. I cupped my hands under the stream and I was just about to splash cold water onto my face. I looked at myself in the mirror again. My old bruises were completely gone. She’d scratched me hard on the cheek, I remembered how it had stung, the slick blood running down my face. I inspected my skin. There wasn’t a mark. I tried to count how many hours it had been. Seven? Eight? I could heal up in that time with half my vampire healing abilities. But it felt quicker than normal. Either I was showing more vampire side, which scared me, or something else was wrong – I’d missed more time or something. It scared me too, so I decided to believe the former.

  Still, it all felt wrong. Very wrong.

  I still felt the humiliation of the scratch, the fact that I hadn’t seen it coming, they’d I’d gotten beaten up by a girl. Again.

  I fetched my knife in its sheath from the bedroom and hung it in the shower. I wasn’t going to do this one without protection. I wasn’t going to do anything without protection anymore, until I could figure out what the hell was going on. The hot water stung down my leg and I gritted my teeth, trying to keep soap out of the wound.

  By the time I was finished showering two things played in my mind. One: She was just toying with me now, like a cat playing with a mouse. But the real trouble would come. She wouldn’t let me live. If I was getting beaten up already, how would I protect myself when things got serious?

  And two: if I had gotten home by myself that would have been fine, but there were too many things that pointed to someone else trying to fake my routine. That meant that someone knew me well enough to know what I did and where I lived. And if that was the case, I was in very, very deep trouble.

  The phone rang and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I picked it up. I didn’t recognize the number.

  “Hello?” My voice was thin, unsure. I hated the way I sounded.

  “It’s Jennifer,” the feminine voice sounded in my ear, and I could feel every fiber in my body slowly relax. I breathed out, a release. My entire body was tight, my muscles strung out. I rubbed my temple with my free hand.

  “I was just wondering if you’ve managed to find anything yet,” Jennifer said.

  Yes, I found your boyfriend. He was a vampire and I really wanted to see him again.

  “Actually, I was hoping we could meet in person again. There are a couple of things I’d like to talk about.”

  “We can talk now,” she suggested.

  “I don’t think this is the kind of thing we want to talk about on the phone.”

  She gasped on the other end of the line and dropped her voice. “Do you think it’s being tapped?”

  This wasn’t a spy novel. Things weren’t like that. Blood, betrayal, death, that was a part of my daily life. But tapping phones didn’t seem likely. I thought back to Joel, his pit being trashed. The level o
f security on Connor’s online information. I shook it off.

  “Nothing like that. I just want to meet up. When will suit you?”

  “Saturday afternoon,” she said after thinking a moment. “We can meet at my home.”

  I hesitated for a second, but then agreed. If it wasn’t my home it would be hers. I hated being out in public, and I wasn’t willing to let her into my home again unless I didn’t have a choice.

  “I’ll be there at three,” I answered. “Send me your address.”

  “Will you let me know if you find anything in the meantime?”

  “I will,” I lied. I was a terrible person.

  “Truth is I’m starting to lose hope,” she said and a pang of guilt shot through my chest. What was I doing? I was working myself into a corner, and fast. In the beginning of the week my life was regular. Shoot to kill, survive to see another night, take care of Aspen. Simple. Now I didn’t even know which side was up anymore. My life had become a Rubik Cube I couldn’t solve.

  When Jennifer hung up I dialed the office. Boy was Ruben going to be pissed. Not only did I manage to fail his orders and find Connor, but I had also lost an entire night.

  “What?” he barked into the phone when he picked up.

  “I wanted to explain last night,” I answered. This wasn’t going to be easy. I expected him to swear up the one side of me and down the other.

  “What about last night?” he asked. “You have more information you want to share with me?”

  “More?”

  “Than last night.”

  I hesitated. “Did I phone in last night?”

  Ruben snorted. “You told me you’d found a lead and you were tracing him. Not your best effort but it’s better than nothing. What’s going on?”

  Someone was playing with me. Nothing made sense, and most of all, Ruben wasn’t angry with me. Something was definitely off.

  “I just phoned to check what time you needed me in tonight,” I recovered. I didn’t want him to find out something was wrong. I needed this job more than I needed the money.